Holidays are a great time to get together with loved ones and enjoy some time together. Although, what's a holiday without a little drama?
People on Quora and Reddit share the most ridiculous thing that happened at their family dinner. Content has been edited for clarity.
The Sense Of Entitlement Is Strong Here
“My brother has always been particular with taste in food. He always asked my mom to make stove stop stuffing that comes from a box and it must be turkey flavor and combined with a box of cornbread flavor. We knew he liked it, so at Thanksgiving, we would make it. Honestly, all of us enjoyed it.
Several years later, he was married and our family and his wife’s family got together at their new house for Thanksgiving. We arrived when his wife had set the table with the food. Yet there was no stuffing that he liked. His mother-in-law had made a stuffing was made with like minced meat and fruit and nuts, typically served in Mexico. All of us liked it, except for my brother. His mother-in-law had to ask why he had not served himself stuffing. I was beside myself when he said, ‘I don’t like your stuffing, l like the stuffing my mom makes.’
Yes, he was honest but, to say that his mother-in-law was shocking. We all just looked at each other. Then he turns to my mom and asks her to make him ‘his’ stuffing. Oh gosh! Well, my mom gets up after staring him down and says that yes she will make the ‘other’ stuffing, with emphasis on ‘other.’ Then she immediately tells me to come help them. So the three of us are in the kitchen. She told me to make it and she gave her grown son a lecture on being more respectful to his mother-in-law especially as she’s an elder.
While they were talking, I was having issues opening the stuffing bad, and he didn’t have kitchen scissors. So I just grabbed a knife to break open the bag. But I missed, and cut my finger. Great! Fingers bleed easily. Now my finger is bleeding heavily and instead of making stuffing, I’m running my finger under cold water trying to stop the bleeding. My sister-in-law comes over and finds me try to stop the bleeding and rushes for the first aid kit. My mom ends up making the stuffing and served it at the table.
I resumed eating with a finger bandaged and throbbing. My brother’s mother-in-law shakes her head not believing what happened. She served herself the other stuffing and actually complimented my mom on her stuffing. I won’t ever forget that Thanksgiving.”
“They’ve Brought It Up Every Year”
“I started seeing this Swedish girl who I knew was a little out there, but she told me she was alone for Christmas so I told her to come and spend a few days with my large Irish family and I. Christmas Day rolled around, and she and my sisters started into the adult beverages pretty early. I got concerned because I knew this girl could not handle her drinkings too well.
Anyway, I took off to visit a neighbor for a while, and when I got back this girl was lying on the kitchen floor with her arm around my dog and both of them were howling like wolves at the moon. Both my sisters were laughing so hard they could barely breathe. My dad, standing behind me just gave me two pats on the shoulder and said, ‘That’s my lad.’
That was 15 years ago, and they’ve brought it up every year since.”
His Aunt Had A Plan
“My aunt would always make the green bean casserole for every holiday event, and she would always make sure it was in a 9×13 pan which was hard to pass around. So, she would put her casserole right in front of her plate and have everybody hand their plates down and she would scoop out a portion. But, she would always dig underneath the onion layer for each scoop she portioned out, and then she would take all the onions for herself. It was an argument every year.
On the flip side, the first Thanksgiving with my better half, I made the standard green bean casserole and loaded it up with a bunch of french fried onions, because we all know that’s the best part. The kicker, she likes green bean casserole, but she doesn’t like the onions.. That’s just wrong on so many levels, I’ve never looked at her the same way again.”
“John Never Figured Out What He Did Wrong”
“My maternal grandfather died when I was a senior in high school. He’d been an engineer, and he’d been a pretty dang good engineer in his time. He’d worked in the engine room of a ship in the Royal Navy during WWII, which is how he met my grandmother. Afterward, he immigrated to the US to be with my grandmother and raise a family in the States. He worked as an engineer all that time, mostly using his own brain or an abacus to do his calculations.
My cousin, Grandpa’s youngest granddaughter, married a guy I’ll call ‘John’ since it’s a nice generic name. This happened maybe about 6 or 7 years after grandpa died. The next holiday family dinner, she brought her new husband to dinner with my maternal side of the family. Grandma, my Grandpa’s widow, was there along with my cousin’s brothers, my parents, and my cousin’s parents.
Now John is an engineer—and a very arrogant person at times. While we sat around the table, passing the sweet potatoes and laughing about past family affairs, it somehow came up about Grandpa and him sharing a profession.
This led to John stating that he was obviously the better engineer. His reasoning? John had a calculator and other modern tools to help him while my grandfather had none of that. John admitted to not knowing how to use an abacus, but stated, with his nose in the air, that it was imprecise and flawed. So was being able to do precise and difficult calculations without a calculator apparently.
There was nearly a riot at the table that year and John has never quite figured out what he did wrong. My cousin will defend him to the death as well. Even with the many other stupid stunts he has pulled at other holiday dinners since then, and despite it being her grandfather too.
This whole incident is one of the many reasons I try to avoid dinners and holidays with the family if I can. After all, my grandmother grumbled about that day until the day she died 10 years later. Even now, 15 years later, my mother and aunt still bring it up and rant about that incident whenever they are angry with John.”
Making A Scene On Christmas
“My aunt had lost custody of her kids because she was an addict. Custody had been awarded to my parents because they were the closest living relatives who could care for my two cousins. They were just babies at the time, two years, and six months. I was about seven.
So Christmas rolls around, and my aunt is super upset over the fact my parents have her kids. So she decides to take a greyhound/taxi across the state (did I mention this is in Florida?) to see her kids. Mind you, the court system has banned her from having any contact with them or us since she had been treating them like out of them while high on some substance.
So my parents get a call on Christmas day, while the rest of us are opening our presents, that my aunt is walking down the highway screaming about how she wants to see her kids. They should have called the cops right there, but family is family to them, I guess. So my dad went and picked her up and brought her to our place.
They tried to keep her away from us kids while convincing her she needed to leave, but she was high out of her mind and all chaos broke loose. I remember I kept asking my parents what was going on and why she kept yelling, and they kept telling me to go play with my Christmas presents while my cousins were crying in the background.
It took me years to finally figure out what had happened that day, and because of the whole thing, we eventually lost custody of my cousins. Honestly, it was for the best. They now live with a wonderful foster family and no one in my family is allowed to contact them because of what happened that day. My aunt still gets angry every holiday, but thankfully she doesn’t know where they live now and can’t repeat the incident.”
“Everyone Just Pretended Not To Notice”
“We have a tradition where we always eat crêpes on Christmas morning. My mom and I probably spent two days in the kitchen making three different types of crêpes, crêpe casseroles, a bunch of yummy things. My grandma helped us make them, and this has been a tradition for years.
Come Christmas morning, and everyone comes downstairs to open presents. We are all opening presents, and someone notices my grandma is going crazy around in the kitchen. We go over to see what she’s doing, and it turns out she’s decided that our crêpe breakfast wasn’t good enough and she threw it all out. Instead, she was going to make the breakfast SHE wanted – lard stuffed French toast. My mom got super upset with her, and at breakfast, everyone made a point to only eat the crêpes we had scavenged.
My grandma then proceeded to fake a heart attack because we were being so mean to her. She fell to the floor clutching her chest, screaming she couldn’t breathe and someone needed to go get her sleep apnea machine so she could get oxygen. Literally, everyone just pretended not to notice and kept eating breakfast…she didn’t talk to anyone for the rest of her week-long stay, and hasn’t been allowed at family events since.”
“Of Course, Dinner Was Ruined”
“So we had a big formal dining table we ate at every night, holiday or not. We all had our regular seats: dad at the head of the table, mom to his right, my sister beside her, me in front of my sister, my brother between me and my dad. We were raised to mind our manners when at the table, and this was absolutely strictly enforced. No elbows. Certainly no throwing food! Pleasant conversations, with controlled voices.
This big table pulled apart and had a leaf to put in the middle, for extra seats. One year my maternal grandparents joined us for Thanksgiving, and since they were ‘on the leaf’ they were between mom and my sister, Gretchen, and my brother, Drew, and me, in the center of everything.
Dinner is proceeding. Dad cut the turkey, we passed the sides, everyone was having nice conversations.
Mom asked her mother, since the day was coming up, ‘Do you have any desires for your 50th anniversary?’
Grandma smiled and said she would like to renew their vows in front of their pastor. She looked across the table at Grandpa.
Grandpa growled and said, ‘I already stood up and said it once, I’m not saying’ it again.’
Grandma’s eyes flared open wide. She slammed her [full] fork on the table and yelled, ‘Well you LIED the first time you said it, didn’t you?’
The table FROZE. No forks moved. My sister and I stared across the table at each other, both having no idea exactly how to react to this. Mom and dad choked on their food and my brother was too young to realize what was happening. We were all paralyzed.
Grandma shoved back and jumped up from the table. Grandpa spluttered and muttered about vows being stupid, he knew how to be married, he wasn’t going to go through the whole procedure again…he never did go check on Grandma.
I mouthed, ‘I don’t believe that just happened,’ to my sister. She nodded and we all tried to shake it off. But, of course, dinner was ruined.”
They Did Not Even Care They Were Caught
“Every year, my brother brings his ex-wife to Thanksgiving and Christmas because his kids (all grown with their own kids) want her included. She’s a substance addict, but she seriously looks about 30 years older than she really is. One of her 2 daughters does narcotics with her. They’re both trashy as heck
One year, his ex-wife brought her mother to Christmas. We were all friendly to this little old lady, but she never responded back when someone said hi to her. She just sat in a chair in the corner and ignored everyone. Ok, whatever. After we were all done eating I noticed her, my ex-sister-in-law, and my trashy niece all in the kitchen whispering and giggling like little kids trying to get away with something. I went in to see what was going on and they were filling up plates full of leftovers. Food just heaped on in huge piles. They left almost nothing behind. They looked up, saw me, then went right back to filling their plates and giggling. Then they left the party.
What made me so mad was my brother’s ex-wife, having come to every holiday celebration for the past 15 years or so, knows full well that my mom always creates ‘to-go’ plates for everyone at the end of the festivities. Everyone looks forward to this because her cooking is so darn good. This year, there were none.
That toothless pathetic excuse of a human still comes every year but hasn’t pulled that since.”
“I Wasn’t Invited For Christmas That Year”
“The thanksgiving after I turned 21, I got EXTREMELY wasted before dinner. I blacked out and woke up on my couch 4 hours later. Apparently, I got into this huge screaming match between my mom, my grandma, and me because my grandma commented on some of my mental health issues.
Told my dad to shut the heck up and stay out of it every time he tried to talk. And in mid-sentence, I passed out in my food. That was the first time I’ve done or said anything like that. Needless to say, I wasn’t invited for Christmas dinner that year. It’s been two years and they’ve forgiven me, but I still feel really embarrassed about it.”
This Dad Was On Another Level
“We went to my aunt’s house for Christmas dinner, Boxing Day, and fireworks. They have a lot of money and a lot of lands so their place was easy to get lost in. There was also a lot of construction going on. We started off our night by heading up into one of the fields to set off some fireworks. When the fireworks were done, we made our way back. When we reached the bottom of the field, my dad noticed that there was a large pile of sand and mud. He then offered a wrestling match with four of my very large cousins, all of which played rugby and were between in their 20s. My dad is very tall and skinny. To be fair, he lasted about 30 seconds before he got slammed into this massive pile of poop.
Being a little inebriated, he got right back up and asked for a rematch before my aunt (his sister) suggested it might not be a good idea. We decided to have some more drinks and snacks inside while playing some weird x-rated game of charades where my 80-year-old grandad (who’s a vicar) picked out a piece of paper on which my uncle had written: ‘deep-throat.’ He picked another card out.
My dad got into another play fight with my brother who to be fair is a complete wanker and threw him into a glass coffee table. The man is shockingly strong. My mum leaves to cry in the car. While my dad is in the toilet, we collectively decide that we need to keep a very close eye on him before he hurts himself. However, everyone had too much to drink to remember who was in charge of watching him. When we finally realize he’d gone missing (but he was just in the restroom, and then decided to go outside through the bathroom window for reasons unknown to us), he’d actually already come back. With a very large head wound. Because their property was so large with lots of machinery, they had CCTV installed throughout the place, including outside. Someone had the clever idea of watching to see where he’d gone by checking the cameras. We then saw him fighting a wall. He just walked up and head-butted the wall, fell over, and then peed on my uncle’s busshes and came back in.
My dad is absolutely great when he’s sober, but he’s seriously freaking weird when he drinks.”
“Haven’t Had A Holiday At Her House Since”
“There were eight of us playing Spoons in the dining room of my grandma’s house a couple of years ago at Christmas. We are a very competitive family, so when spoons started being grabbed, people would start diving across the table to grab a spoon so they weren’t eliminated.
It got so intense that our grandma came in and started shouting at us, ‘This used to be Grandpa’s table, and you guys are all scratching it up and making it disgusting. This is the last memory I have of him!’
She started to cry and proceeded to go into her bedroom. All of the Christmas gifts she had bought were in there, and she decided to just throw them everywhere. We spent the dinner in silence and haven’t had a holiday at her house since.”
No One Liked What They Saw
“I was 11-12 years old, and just trying to enjoy my Christmas Eve dinner at my grandma’s house. My grandpa never really liked me, so he would try his best to ruin my holiday no matter what. I was minding my own business with my mom and he called me over. So I go over and he tells me to stand still in one spot.
About 5-10 minutes later I’m still here. No one is doing anything, waiting for him to let me go. Well finally I walk away and he starts to get mad and flips out. He then goes downstairs to his computer, and stays there the whole time because everyone didn’t like how badly he treated me all the time, every time we were together.”
“We Called My Dad ‘Spoonman'”
“We were just on a visit to grandma near Christmas, and she had made pudding. Now, you should know my grandma lived alone at the time and thus the amount of cutlery in her kitchen was limited, but she had a really nice big set in her dining room.
Long story short, we were one spoon short to all eat pudding. While my grandma was saying she was going to get a spoon from the dining room, my dad burst out in anger because he hadn’t got a spoon and left. Like, he just drove off and left my mom, me, and my siblings behind.
It was a good pudding.
One of my uncles gave us a lift home, and we called my dad ‘Spoonman’ (behind his back) for quite a while.”
She Got Her Revenge
“This particular Thanksgiving dinner was on a working farm and had several families together with adults, children, stepchildren, and invited guests.
People were in several rooms with tables, card tables, and TV trays to use for eating.
When the dinner was finished, the TV trays were put away and several card games, dominos games, and entertainment by several groups started up along with copious amounts of adult beverage consumed by some of the adults.
One of the uncles found a cattle ‘hot shot’ hanging on the back porch and was joking about shocking one of the adolescent girls with it. This escalated to the point where he did shock her with it, chasing her out into the yard. The ‘hot shot’ had fresh batteries and caused her to wet her pants, embarrassing her no end.
Normalcy returned to the group, and the cattle ‘hot shot’ was put away. This adolescent girl went into one of the spare bedrooms and changed clothes, then she quietly slipped through the crowd and retrieved the cattle ‘hot shot.’ The uncle was busy playing cards and didn’t notice her approaching with the cattle ‘hot shot.’
She slid it between the metal chair he was sitting on and his buttocks. The crackle of the electricity coming from the cattle ‘hot shot’ as it struck the arc between the end of the probe, the chair, his buttocks, and other manly parts could be clearly heard. As he screamed and raised up out of the chair, she raised the cattle ‘hot shot’ to keep it firmly tucked between his cheeks and other manly parts.
He threatened physical harm with fists clenched once he caught his breath. Several of the men in the room stepped between her and the uncle. The girl triggered the cattle ‘hot shot’ a couple of times causing him to flinch each time. Once the altercation settled down, an aroma filled the room, and the uncle had to excuse himself.
He was in the bathroom for 15–20 minutes, and his wife brought him a change of clothes. Once he came out, he was still irritated about being shocked with the cattle ‘hot shot’ and wanted to see the adolescent girl that had shocked him with it.
After several hours, the two met in the yard, and he apologized for shocking her with the cattle ‘hot shot,’ and said he had no idea that it produced such a significant jolt of electricity. They shook hands and parted as family.
I congratulated the adolescent girl for striking back and humiliating the obnoxious uncle. He was much more subdued at future family gatherings and could almost be a pleasurable person to be around. (A mention of the cattle ‘hot shot’ around him was always humorous!) At all family gatherings for the next several years, the cattle ‘hot shot’ was carried down to the barn and kept away from family just in case anyone got an idea about using them on the family.”
“Last Time I Invite A Stranger!”
“I usually bring a close friend or two to my family’s Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings, as do some of my cousins. One Thanksgiving while I was still living at home, it was my parents’ turn to host at our house, so I invited a few more friends than usual. One of the friends I invited sort of guilted me into letting him invite his friend, ‘K,’ who I had only met a few times because K apparently had nowhere else to go for Thanksgiving. I didn’t know K very well but felt bad, so I said sure, he was welcome to come by.
This dude K showed up early before anyone else, including our mutual friend who had asked me to invite him. Before dinner had even started, he was already passed out in an armchair in the living room. We were all drinking, but it seemed crazy that he could already be smashed enough to fall asleep in the middle of my loud family. I assumed maybe he’d pregamed before coming over for some reason – maybe he was anxious about being around a bunch of new people, reasonable enough. K stayed passed out in the chair in the middle of everyone for a good chunk of the evening, then woke up to have a few drinks and awkwardly hit on my cousin’s girlfriend before leaving.
Found out later from our mutual friend that K hadn’t been passed out because he was trashed – he was on some substances and had shot up in the bathroom. Last time I invite a near-stranger to a family gathering!”